As captain from 1932, he commanded the 12th Destroyer Group, the cruiser Abukuma, and from 1937 the battleship Kongō.[1]

Kurita became a rear admiral on November 15, 1938 commanding the 1st Destroyer Flotilla then the 4th Destroyer Flotilla.[1] He was in command of 7th Cruiser Division at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor.[2]

Kurita was a dedicated officer, willing to die if necessary, but not wishing to die in vain. Like Yamamoto, Kurita believed that for a captain to "go down with his ship" was a wasteful loss of valuable naval experience and leadership. When ordered by Admiral Soemu Toyoda to take his fleet through the San Bernardino Strait in the central Philippines and attack the American landings at Leyte, Kurita thought the effort a waste of ships and lives, especially since he could not get his fleet to Leyte Gulf until after the landings, leaving little more than empty transports for his huge battleships to attack.

His first flagship just six days before the Battle of Leyte Gulf was actually the Atago which was sunk by an American submarine in Palawan Passage forcing him to swim for his life and transfer his flag to the Yamato. He bitterly resented his superiors, who, while safe in bunkers in Tokyo, ordered Kurita to fight to the death against hopeless odds and without air cover.

While his fleet was en route from Brunei to attack the American Invasion fleet, Kurita's ships were attacked by two American submarines, the Darter and the Dace, which sank two cruisers (Atago and Maya) in the Palawan Passage. Kurita in the flagship Atago was forced to transfer to Yamato. While in the confines of the Sibuyan Sea and approaching the San Bernardino Strait, he was again attacked by U.S. carrier planes which damaged several other ships, including Yamato. Constant air attacks from Admiral William "Bull" Halsey's 3rd Fleet scored a number of torpedo and dive bomber hits on Yamato and Mushashi, mortally wounding the latter, and scored a number of hits on other vessels.

These attacks caused Kurita to call off his attack and turn his fleet west away from Leyte Gulf. Thus began a chain of events that continues to engage historians and biographers to this day. Halsey, believing that he had mauled Kurita's fleet and that the Japanese "Central Forces" were retreating, and believing that he had the orders and authorization to do so, abandoned his station guarding General MacArthur's landing at Leyte Gulf and the San Bernardino Strait, in order to pursue Admiral Jisaburō Ozawa's Northern Fleet of Japanese carriers that were sent as a decoy to lure the Americans away from Leyte. But before doing so, in fact before Ozawa's force had been sighted, Halsey had sent a message announcing a "battle plan" to detach his battleships to cover the exit of the strait. With the decision to attack Ozawa, this battle plan was never executed and the heavy ships went north with the carriers.

Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, Commander 7th Fleet and responsible for protecting the landing forces, assumed that Halsey's "Battle Plan" was a deployment order and that Task Force 34 (TF 34) was actually guarding San Bernardino. Kinkaid thus concentrated his battleships to the south in order to face the Japanese "Southern Force". During the night of 24–25 October 1944 Kurita changed his mind again, and turned his ships around and headed east again, toward Leyte Gulf. On the morning of 25 October, Kurita's fleet, led by Yamato, exited San Bernardino Strait and sailed south along the coast of Samar. 30 minutes after dawn, the battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy sighted "Taffy 3" — a task unit of Kinkaid's covering forces that consisted of six escort carriers, three destroyers and four small destroyer escorts, commanded by Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague. Taffy 3 was designed to provide shore support and anti-submarine patrols; not to engage in fleet action against battleships.

Admiral Kurita thought he had chanced upon the carriers of the American 3rd Fleet and ordered his battleships to open fire, including Yamato with her 18.1 in (460 mm) guns. However, the moment Taffy 3 was sighted, the "Central Force" had just been ordered to change from nighttime to air defense steaming formation, but had not yet completed the maneuver. Rather than properly form his ships for action with the enemy, Kurita at this point gave the order for "General Attack". His ships thus charged uncoordinated into action and Kurita quickly lost tactical control of the battle.

Kurita's forces mauled the American ships, sinking one of the small carriers, two destroyers, including the USS Johnston, commanded by Commander Ernest E. Evans. But the planes from Taffy 3 and Taffy 2, stationed farther south, fought back, and although the American destroyers had only 5 in (130 mm) guns, they too attacked, launched torpedoes and laid smoke. These determined attacks by the escorts and continual air attacks served to further confuse and separate Kurita's forces. Kurita, whose flagship Yamato fell far behind early in the battle while avoiding an aerial torpedo attack, lost sight of the enemy and many of his own ships. Meanwhile, the courageous efforts of the Taffies had sunk two heavy cruisers and knocked a third out of action (which was later scuttled/sunk): Chikuma, Suzuya, and Chōkai. Many of his other ships had also been hit. After about two and a half hours action with Taffy 3, Kurita ordered his force to regroup on a northerly course, away from Leyte.

By this time, Kurita had news that the Japanese "Southern Force", which was to attack Leyte Gulf from the south, had already been destroyed by Kinkaid's battleships, which were too far south to attack Kurita's forces. Admiral Kurita's "Central Force" had fewer than half its ships. With Musashi gone, Kurita had four battleships but only three cruisers remaining, and all of his ships were damaged and low on fuel. Kurita was intercepting messages that indicated Admiral Halsey had sunk the four carriers of the "Northern Force" and was racing back to Leyte with his battleships to confront the Japanese fleet and that powerful elements of 7th Fleet were approaching from out Leyte Gulf. After steaming back and forth off Samar for two more hours, he and his chief of staff Tomiji Koyanagi decided to retire and retreated back through the San Bernardino Strait.

His ships were subjected to further air attack the rest of the day and Halsey's battleships just missed catching him that night. Kurita's retreat saved Yamato and the remainder of the IJN 2nd Fleet from certain destruction, but he had failed to complete his mission, attacking the amphibious forces in Leyte Gulf. The path had been laid open to him by the sacrifices of the Northern and Southern Forces, but closed again by the determination and courage of the Taffies.

Kurita was criticized by some elements in the Japanese military for not fighting to the death. In December, Kurita was removed from command. In order to protect him against assassination, he was reassigned as commandant of the Imperial Japanese Navy Academy.[citation needed]

Following the Japanese surrender, Kurita found work as a scrivener and masseur, living quietly with his daughter and her family. He never discussed politics or the war with his family or with anyone, except to conduct a brief interview with a journalist, Ito Masanori, in 1954 when he stated that he had made a mistake at Leyte by turning away and not continuing with the battle, a statement he later retracted. He was found by an American naval officer after the war where he was interviewed for the Analysis Division of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey.

With Kurita's address in hand, a young American naval officer got out of a jeep and spotted the unimposing figure tending to his garden chores. Years later, he still vividly recalled the moment: "It really made an impression of me. The war was just over. Less than a year before Kurita had been in command of the largest fleet that was ever put together, and there he was out there chopping potatoes." [3]

Afterward, Kurita returned to his retirement, making a twice-yearly pilgrimage to Yasukuni Shrine to pray for his dead comrades-in-arms. In 1966, he was present at the deathbed of his old colleague, Jisaburō Ozawa, at which he silently wept.

It was not until he was in his 80s that Kurita began to again speak of his actions at Leyte. He claimed privately to a former Naval Academy student (and biographer), Ooka Jiro, that he withdrew the fleet from the battle because he did not believe in wasting the lives of his men in a futile effort, having long since believed that the war was lost.

US Strategic Bombing Survey Pacific – Interrogations of Japanese officials A list of the U.S. Naval Interrogations of Japanese Officials, conducted after the war, with full texts of the interviews. A number of these interviews are available on line and provide interesting insight from the Japanese commanders, who, many for first time, are openly critical of the war and their superiors. Admiral Kurita and his role in the war is discussed in a number of different interrogations.